Packt Publishing's 'PhoneGap: Beginner's Guide'

Packt Publishing recently asked me to be a technical reviewer on one of their upcoming books "PhoneGap: Beginner's Guide".

I would highly recommend Packt as a publisher, having read many of their books, 3 of which are currently on my office bookshelf; Drupal E-commerce with Ubercart 2.x, Drupal 6 Themes and WordPress 3 Site Blueprints, all informative reads. On a side note, Packt has recently (June '10) moved their site over to Drupal, taking advantage of Ubercart for their online sales. Their decision on Drupal and one that impresses me is detailed on the Drupal site; Case Study: Packt Publishing.

The book I'm reviewing is a detailed introduction to PhoneGap, and as they explain themselves;

"...an open source development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps. Build apps in HTML and JavaScript and still take advantage of core features in iPhone/iPod touch, iPad, Google Android, Palm, Symbian and Blackberry SDKs."

This differs somewhat to Sencha Touch, another new and impressive cross-platform framework allowing you to build applications that feel native on the iPhone, iPad, Android and other touch-screen platforms. When I say feel native, that is a major difference between PhoneGap and Sencha Touch, PhoneGap can build native applications as it can take advantage of the platform specific SDK's where as Sencha Touch cannot. In English, PhoneGap can take advantage of platform and device specific buttons and features, where as Sencha Touch will have some limitations. As mobile platforms are now moving faster with regard to web technologies, you get to build application with some of the newest features of HTML5, Javascript/jQuery and CSS3. This mean that some cross-platform mobile developers will have a greater knowledge of web technologies of the future then the Web Developers themselves! This rapid adoption of emerging technologies  is mainly due to the 1 - 2 year lifespan of smartphones. Packt's Technical review process itself is in theory quite simple. You read through and verify the technical detail, content and structure of each chapter, adding comments/notes to the text wherever you have anything to add, be it a correction, suggestion or point of view. Then at the end of reviewing the chapter you answer a questionnaire on the chapter, which addresses the reviewers opinion on various aspects within the chapter; What you as the reviewer would like to see more of, less of, how it could be made more interesting, if there were any important uncovered topics, relevance of the images/figures, etc., along with the reviewer's chapter rating. The reviewing process is not only a great learning experience, but you get you get credited in the book you review, which is great advertisement and you get two free books, one being the book you review. I would recommend getting involved with reviewing a book of interest to you. If you have the time to spare, find out more about being a technical reviewer.